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FRONTLINE; Opium Brides

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Premiered January 1983
Since January 1983, FRONTLINE has served as American public television's - PBS - flagship public affairs series. Hailed upon its television broadcast debut as "the last best hope for broadcast documentaries," FRONTLINE's stature over 23 years is reaffirmed each week through incisive documentaries covering the scope and complexity of the human experience.
Series release date: 1/1983

Program Description

Unexpected victims have been caught in the crossfire of attempts to eradicate Afghanistan's flourishing drug trade: young farm girls. Afghanistan produces more than 90 percent of the world's illicit opium. Opium farmers have long borrowed money from drug gangs, some with links to the Taliban, to subsidize their crops. Now, as the Afghan government destroys their livelihood in an eradication program, the farmers find themselves in a horrifying situation: repay their debts or give their daughters to drug-traffickers, often to be used for sex. Award-winning Afghan journalist Najibullah Quraishi reports on the harrowing story of families torn apart and the collateral damage of the counter-narcotics effort in Afghanistan.

The Secret War
Also this hour, an encore broadcast: FRONTLINE crosses the border into Pakistan, where correspondents Stephen Grey and Martin Smith go inside "The Secret War" against the militants. They uncover evidence of covert support for elements of the Taliban by the Pakistani military and its intelligence service, the ISI. At a safe house not far from where Osama bin Laden was killed, they make contact with one mid-level Taliban commander who tells FRONTLINE, "If they really wanted to, [the Pakistanis] could arrest us all in an hour."